Toomey still 'haunted' by 2012 presidential results

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey is "haunted" by the Republicans' failed presidential campaign and the party's inability to craft a convincing blame-the-Democrats message.

Though the Pennsylvania Republican crisscrossed the state as a loyal foot soldier for Mitt Romney, joining the effort to make the campaign a referendum on President Barack Obama's first term, Toomey told a ballroom of conservatives Thursday that their party blundered by not convincing voters that big government caused the nation's economic woes.

"I remain haunted by the experience of the 2012 campaign, where it seemed like every day President Obama would go out in every speech and he would say, 'We sure don't want to go back to the policies of the past that got us into this mess,' " Toomey said. "It was the [political] 'left' that got us into this mess. That's the fact."

"But we never had an alternative, compelling narrative that explained that, and, as a result, we lost a lot of ground," he continued. "We can't let that happen over the [current debate about the] level of government spending."

Toomey spoke for about 20 minutes as one of the kickoff speakers in a long line of Republicans slated to address the annual Conservative Political Action Conference over three days. They include buzzed-about 2016 presidential contenders: Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, Kentucky U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

Additionally, the crowd will hear from Sarah Palin, Donald Trump and Romney.

Toomey's sweeping condemnation of his party's public relations failure contained no specifics. Was he blaming Romney or the party as a whole, even himself? And his subsequent call to arms against big government sounded like Republican policy speeches given on the campaign trail.

Democrats would argue that Obama's resounding re-election is an affirmation of their policies, and that it was the 1990s deregulation of big banks and the 2000s Bush-era tax cuts that helped lead to the economic recession, not government overreach.

Charlie Gerow, a Harrisburg consultant who moderated a panel at CPAC that touched on GOP messaging, said Toomey was right in his assessment.

"It's the haunting question for a lot of Republicans and conservatives: How the heck did we lose?" Gerow said. "I don't think it was just message. But the message was unfortunately articulated too many times in terms of spreadsheets and financial statements instead of in human terms that people really understood and connected with."

Toomey largely used the platform to implore the crowd of conservative activists to stand against government spending.

"This is a defining battle for us and I'm not obsessed with this because I'm obsessed with green eyeshades and spreadsheets," he said.

The debate over the level of government spending has handicapped Washington for nearly three years, and is, put simply, one of the main policy points that divides the two parties.

Republicans like Toomey see cutting spending and lowering taxes as the key to economic prosperity, while Democrats believe that greater investment by the federal government will spur growth.

Senate Democrats and House Republicans this week both released budgets that illustrate how far apart the party's priorities are. The Democrats would increase taxes on the richest Americans, cut defense and add $100 billion in infrastructure spending. Republicans would lower rates for those wealthy individuals and cut spending for a variety of programs, a plan they say would balance the budget by 2023 and produce a surplus.